Errol Hughes

Father of three. Husband of one. Born an increasing number of years ago. This is not a biography.

Benjamin's Donkey left their cozy living room on the eastern edge of Houston at the top of 97 for the northern edge of Austin where, having left their Margaret behind, America laid down her axe to take up the bass while Errol continued to croak out wry songs pounding the strings of his green guitar. In less than a year, they had migrated south of the lake and married.

Some months later, they met Bryan and got serious, tripping under the flickering "Italian Sun," swaggering past blue footed Henry prostrate at Canossa, Errol growling, accusatory, "You're not in Love" into a hot mic.

They kept the best of the kindest company those days, eating and drinking and playing, peeling off drummers like hot wax, contenting themselves to trio it up to the stage for a fix from time to time as they tightened the rhythmic noose around neck after neck of song after song.

By the Summer of 99, they had landed on a monicker, The Rosewaters, after Kurt's drunken martyr, Eliot, and stepped out of the midnight, floodlamped parking lot into the crisp, clean vibe of Sonic Arts Studio where, for a few hours, they played it straight to tape. They walked away a few hundred light and another drummer down but with a ruddy glow.

A year later of shelling out for drummers who could keep time and read a clock to pull off a few solid shows, The Rosewaters took a back seat as Ellis and Alison moved north with their mom. Errol and America started packing for the climb to keep up with the kids, crooning the long  goodbye to now old and a few new friends, cramming as much into the 8-track as they could. On the way out the door, they ran into Mike, the drummer they'd been looking for since the seriousness had set in, just in time to track a few backbeats.

Errol drug the 8-track to Mike's, Mike drug the kit to the Lab, Errol snuck off with America into the night and unpacked on the northern edge of Boulder, where and when an apartment could still be rented without a trust fund  - just barely: one Matchless Lightening Reverb converted to two months of Gunbarrel rent.

 Boulder was Errol and America under the moniker, Maxwell Silver, flirting with a drummer or two in Brendan's garage, but mostly it was Errol tripping up to Penny Lane and Conor O'Neil's and writing and recording and writing and so on.

Mid-Boulder was also Nat who filled in where Bryan had been, making us whole from time to time for a café gig or two. There was more eating and drinking with the best of the kindest, though with less regularity and to greater excess.

In 06, Errol and America moved East to Chicago where Errol wrote less and America wrote constantly, piling up screenplays and plays for the move West in 09 to LA, where the grind and grad school would all but snuff out the possibility of music and the fab Clancy would be born. The Hummingbird stood in a corner, a withering widow, an orphaned child.

Four years on, as much out of pity as desire, Errol took her out for a stroll a couple of times and caught the bug. Writing recommenced. Recording recommenced. A new mic was bought.

Fall of 15, Errol, America and Clancy arrived East of Boulder, North of Denver, to set up camp in Broomfield. The grind was still on but recovery was underway. New songs were written. Old songs were sung. And so on.

All along, the digital revolution, the longest most continuous revolution, the internet revolution was  upheaving  the music business, salting the earth in its wake as it birthed new opportunities for singers and songwriters and musicians of every ilk who clung to their day jobs to feed, love, and insure their families to turn loose their mythical, scrawled and crooning babies into the rippling wilds of streaming and downloading and so on.

These days, Errol writes and records and recovers and records and distributes and shares and writes some more in the moments between the day job and the family and the talking and the consuming and the everything else that is the living and the loving and the infuriating and the beautiful and the heartbreaking and the inspiring and the so on ...

... hope you enjoy my little nursery of songs and instrumental pieces - Scotch tape, rough cut corners, and all ... If you do, hop over to your favorite streamer or seller and follow, play, playlist, download, and most importantly: share.